I wish I were a writer and made a living writing fiction, because then
I could just write a novel or something based on this idea. However, I'm
not, and I'm too lazy to write, so I'll just throw the idea here. (It will
disappear in a couple of weeks and people will forget it soon after, but
that doesn't really matter.)

  Of course there's nothing new under the sun, so there most probably exist
countless stories already with similar ideas, but nevertheless, I think this
could be a bases for a good book or movie script.

  Some time in the near future there's a city or country where some
innovative new form of criminal investigative process has been implemented,
bringing the conviction rates for serious crimes (such as murders) to
almost 100%. As a consequence of this the incidence of such crimes has
dropped dramatically (because the high conviction rates also act as a good
deterrent.)

  A new police recruit starts slowly, during the years, getting a clearer
and clearer picture of what's really happening, though. The reality is:
While yes, many real criminals are convicted, but when a crime is way too
hard to solve, the police will take some hobo, plant the necessary evidence,
and convict him.

  When the recruit discovers this, he is given the speech. The argument
why it's not as bad as it sounds: The very fact that conviction rates are
so high acts as a good deterrent for criminals, which is why crime rates
overall have plummeted so dramatically. Yes, sometimes an innocent person
is convicted, but it's not that bad: He was a homeless drunkard living on
the streets who owned nothing more than the rags he was wearing. In prison
he is given the opportunity to better himself: He can study, take classes,
learn and do jobs, and so on. He can actually transform from a useless hobo
to a contributing member of the society.

  However, that's not the full story, as the recruit later learns. At first,
when this "methodology" was first instituted, this was considered an utmost
last resort, when everything else failed. However, over the years the police
got lazier and lazier. After all, it was so much easier to simply convict a
hobo than the real criminal. That threshold at which the police would simply
give up investigating a crime and convict an innocent hobo got lower and
lower as time passed. Some repeat criminals were actually getting the gist
of the scheme, and had learned to fool the system (which had got, as said,
lazier and lazier at catching the actual criminals).

  So the recruit is faced with a moral dilemma: Expose the entire scheme
to the world, enraging everybody, probably causing revolts and making crime
rates once again sky-rocket, probably causing most of the convicted criminals
to be freed (even those who really were guilty, but convicted under dubious
conditions), or keep quiet about it and let the scheme continue. (After all,
the crime rates *are* record low at the moment...)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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